Zion Canyon

The Narrows

We wake to thunder this morning, the weather forecast gives an 80% chance of rain for both today and tomorrow. We decide to chance it and take the shuttle down Zion Canyon. Our first stop is Big Bend because a ranger has a telescope setup to look for California condors, but it begins to drizzle and we give up. We can see the Great White throne from here and Angel’s landing. We move up the canyon to the Narrows to take the riverside walk. Here the sandstone changes from Kayenta where the Virgin river can easily carve a wider to canyon to Navejo sandstone which is much harder making the canyon much narrower. The rain stops and the sun peaks out as we walk up the easy path to the point where you hike through the water. Given the thunderstorm possibility that doesn’t sound very inviting, who wants to have a flash flood greet you? As we return the rain start coming down, but we escape the worst of it under a rock overhang.
We continue on to weeping rock. Here we have a short steep walk where numerous plant species are along the path from cactus at the bottom to Oregon grape near the top. The water that weeps out from the hard shale has been measured to be 400 to 1200 years old since it fell as rain. I wonder how they measure the age of this rain, but forget to ask the ranger. By the time, we get down from the weeping rock, the rain has begun in earnest. So we head to the Zion Human History Museum for the displays, park movie, and a ranger talk on California condors. These huge birds with their wingspan of almost 9 feet, were almost extinct. In 1987, they captured the last 9 birds and began raising them in captivity. Beginning in 1992, they began to release the birds back to the wild. Today, there are over 180 birds, 2/3rds of them in California, and about a 1/3 nesting on the Vermillion cliffs in Arizona. The Arizona birds are often seen soaring over Zion Canyon in the summer and fall.
No campfire talk tonight, it rained almost steadily from 3 PM until the next morning.

View from our campsite